6/05/2016

On the Charlie Sykes Show on the big 50,000 watt WTMJ in Milwaukee: Benefits of Concealed Carry & Discussion of Katie Couric's new gun control movie

I talked with substitute host Mike Seigel about the benefits of concealed carry for self defense. Also discussed is Katie Couric's new gun-control documentary "Under The Gun." Couric interviewed Dr. Lott for almost 4 hours but ended up not using any of the material. Couric had no experts on the opposite side of the gun-control issue even though Dr. Lott was told they wanted to have balance in the documentary.
(May 31st 2016 9:07am-9:24am CT)

A note on some recent Chicago gun control laws: Still no gun stores or shooting ranges in Chicago

People know that handguns were banned in Chicago up until 2010. Then there were extreme restrictions on where you could posses a gun even in your home (e.g., not in your garage or on your porch). There were other strict gun control laws. It might be hard to believe, but Chicago has had rules that banned the sale or transfers of guns. It has banned training facilities.

U.S. District Judge Edmond E. Chang said in his ruling that while the government has a duty to protect its citizens, it's also obligated to protect constitutional rights, including the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. However, Chang said he would temporarily stay the effects of his ruling, meaning the ordinances can stand while the city decides whether to appeal. . . .

Now Cook County, like Seattle, has a tax on ammunition. From the Illinois Business Daily (May 30, 2016):

“The gun tax is nothing more than a modern day poll tax against the poor,” John Boch, executive director of the pro-gun Guns Save Life group told Illinois Business Daily in an email. “Gun control is racist, classist and sexist--we don't support those things.”

The latest tax is part of a $4.5 billion budget approved last November for the county, which includes roughly $500 million in new spending funded primarily by various sales tax increases, including the ammo tax.

A bill currently in the Illinois General Assembly, however, could stop those ammunition tax increases and even possibly roll back previous ones. House Bill 4348 would take away the power for local governments to impose sales tax increases on weapons and ammunition, stating that cities and home rule communities “may not impose any tax, fee or other assessment other than the normal sales tax rate for goods, on any firearms, firearm attachments or firearm ammunition.” Boch said he hoped the bill would preempt any legal action the group might take against the new taxes. . . .

Besides the famous McDonald case, other Court cases that have cut back on Chicago's gun laws are: Ezell v. City of Chicago (7th Cir. 2011) (right to arms would be meaningless without right to “maintain proficiency” by “training and practice” at a shooting range); Illinois Ass’n of Firearms Retailers v. City of Chicago (N.D. Ill. 2014) (right to arms includes “the right to acquire a firearm” so city ban on all gun stores is void). So the courts struck down the bans, but the question is how many shooting ranges or gun stores there are in Chicago. It looks like there are currently no shooting ranges in Chicago. Try Googling "'shooting ranges' Chicago." As of January this year there was one attempt at "pitching plans to open the city's only gun store and gun range," but nothing has happened so far.

Illinois is one of the 42 Shall-Issue states, so in an important sense it is more liberal than most of the 8 May Issue states, but, with a 16 hour training requirement and $150 fee, it takes about $500 to get a concealed handgun permit. This is by far the most costly of the different Shall-Issue states.This inability to have easy access to training or a store as well as the costs of getting a permit means that law-abiding poor people will find it very difficult to legally defend themselves.

Criminal immigrants reoffend at "markedly higher than Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have suggested to Congress in the past"

In 2013, Obama administration released 36,000 illegal alien criminals awaiting deportation (Senator Ted Cruz has pointed out that if you add the 36,000 released from detention in 2013 and the 68,000 released that year under prosecutorial guidelines the total comes to 104,000). In 2015 that number had grown to almost 90,000. We have seen the Obama administration refusing to pick up illegal alien who is committing a misdemeanor and a felony. Democrats have claimed that the recidivism rate for these illegals were about 15.9 percent (though the link to the study appears broken). Well, a new study by the Boston Globe has found a recidivism rate in three years that is twice as high.

The names of these criminals have never before been made public and are coming to light now only because the Globe sued the federal government for the list of criminals immigration authorities returned to neighborhoods across the country. A judge ordered the names released in 2013, and the Globe then undertook the work that the federal government didn’t, scouring court records to find out how many released criminals reoffended.

The Globe has also published, in conjunction with this story, a searchable database of the thousands of names that were disclosed to the news organization, so that crime victims, law enforcement officials, and managers of sex offender registries — who are often unaware of these releases — can find out if the criminals may still be in the United States. . . .